In Stargate, the plot mcguffin builders that a lot of the plot revolves around are the Ancients. The Ancients eventually ascended and became a sort of Energy being. What would it mean for our society if it was possible, through increased intelligence, spirituality, or biological change, to become ascended. Additionally, an individual can be helped being ascended by someone already ascended. According to the wiki, Ascension is:

Ascension is a process that allows beings to be able to separate from their physical bodies and to live eternally as pure energy in a superior plane with a greater amount of knowledge and power. It can be a mental, spiritual or evolutionary process—a direct result of obtaining a certain level of wisdom and knowledge as a civilization.

How would this affect society if this were possible, and demonstrable by highly intelligent and/or spiritual individuals?

Everyone would want to do it and then we'd all discover just what is Up there. Since one can bring another AND the fact that everyone ascended actually gives good reports, it is now far less dubious than an afterlife. Which would really explain why the Ancients all disappeared all at once.

Unless its all a scam on a lovecraftian scale. But then, we wouldn't know.

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Mass chaos would prevail for some time. Actually communicating information this profound to people is hard and will be met with all kinds of disbelief and resistance, and every possible bias will be brought out. I'm assuming the process has no bias to start with, which in and of itself seems iffy. Like what counts as spiritual? Can the most rabid and devote believer in Islamic State get into this state as easy as a Peace Corps volunteer?

"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956

Yeah, there are definite religious ramifications here. A lot of people may feel that this is basically an extreme heresy, because it's more or less an atheist version of an afterlife. Though if one spends it sitting around a '60s diner reading the newspaper I might be a little disappointed... but anyway, yeah, there's going to be flap about how only people who believe in THEIR god should get an afterlife or whatever.

That's probably going to be the biggest hurdle. The rest of it seems simple enough-- there's a certain moral component at work or maybe that was just Oma trying to be picky about who she helped Ascend because the Ancients were kinda dicks. And on the whole it seems fairly similar to the whole Buddhist/Hindu? idea of Nirvana, where you basically achieve personal spiritual perfection. Only without the spirituality, I guess.

If Ascension is proven and demonstrated -
A) People will attempt to Ascend

B) People will ignore it and continue on

C) People will attempt to stop people from Ascending / try and develop ways to kill ascended beings

The effect on Society - The uproar would be catastrophic. People would treat these Ascended beings as either Gods / Angels or Devils / Demons.
You would have people falling over themselves trying to Ascend themselves or carry favour to get "helped".

Morality seems to be unreliable when it comes to Ascension. The Ori managed to ascend and Anbuis mk1 pulled it off with help.
The Anbuis mk2 was on the path to Ascension and his intentions for what he was going to do were pretty clear on the dark side of morality. If he can ascend then it seems really unlikely that ethics and morality really matter. The only aspects that do seem to matter are state of mind and biology.

Ascension does not appear to dramatically change the personality. Daniel Jackson was still Daniel Jackson, he just supposedly had more knowledge and could do some tricks.

The main issue is that if you go with the idea that humans are the first to Ascend EVER then that instantly means the first person to do it has somehow managed to level up into a power vacuum where they have complete control and no oversight / limitations. For someone like Daniel that is less of a concern but someone like Jack O'Neil freely admitted that if he had that kind of power he would use it.
Not so bad if the person is of a good moral character and ethically sound. Someone like Anubis getting that power would be catastrophic.

Translating that into a realistic world: I do not see any human worthy of being given that kind of unchecked power or being able to handle it responsibly.

As a person that Ascends, would the human thing not be to try and help your loved ones, friends and family do the same ?
What if you do not like someone, are you going to bar someone from Ascending ?

What happens when enough people Ascend of a certain mindset - You get the Ori or Ancients who then impose rules on every other person that Ascends.
I.E You Ascend and the only thing that has really changed is your a glowing ball. Your still going to end up answering to the bigger group that can dictate the "rules"

Inevitably, people Ascend that have a different mind-set, form their own group and then you have an Ascended War.

For humans - Your going to be completely at the mercy of the Ascended beings. Either they become aloof and ignore the "lower classes" except when it suits them or they decide to start using their powers to dictate the way things should be done according to their vision.

I do not think it is going to go well if an Ascended Being comes back telling people to follow a path that contradicts established views. Even the most well meaning Ascended Being is going to start a religious war doing that kind of thing.